GRAND FORKS, N.D. — A little over two years after University of North Dakota officials announced they’d identified the remains of dozens of Native Americans in the university’s possession, the return of the deceased to their descendants can begin.

“It’s finally done,” said Keith Malaterre, director of the Indigenous Student Center and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. “They finally get to go home.”

All told, the remains of some 57 ancestors and associated funerary objects are now available for repatriation, according to the two Federal Register notices published in August. Tribes have been able to submit written claims for ancestral remains since the notices went out.

Per the Federal Register notices, the remains have a “reasonable connection” to nearly two dozen Native tribes, including all five tribes in North Dakota as well as tribes in South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wyoming.

Many of the remains in question came from excavations of burial mounds across North Dakota. Ancestral remains were received by the university as early as 1907 and as late as 1982, according to the notices.

The university has also issued notices of intent to repatriate several sacred objects to area tribes, including the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota.

An unspecified amount of ancestral remains or related objects possessed by UND was also transferred under the legal authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in August, in order to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

An apology

The return of ancestral remains comes just over two years after UND first announced it had located what it estimated at the time as around 250 boxes of sacred objects and the remains of what was initially estimated to be 70 Native American ancestors.

Faculty had first identified ancestral remains in the university’s possession in March 2022, beginning months of discussions with area tribal nations.

President Andy Armacost issued an apology to tribal nations across the country and pledged to return the remains and any sacred objects in the university’s possession to their respective tribes.

Since 2022, the university has worked since then with the affected tribes as well as multiple state and federal agencies to inventory the ancestral remains and identify their rightful recipients while remaining in compliance with NAGPRA.

The search

Crystal Alberts, co-chair of UND’s NAGPRA compliance committee, says staff has searched “building to building, floor to floor, door to door” to identify any ancestral remains in the university’s possession.

Even so, she did not rule out the possibility of more ancestral remains being found in the future.

“I can’t definitively say no one else will be found and there is no one else,” Alberts said. “That would be an irresponsible statement.”

Dianne Desrosiers, the tribal historic preservation officer for the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe, credited UND for its handling of the reparation process.

“I have to commend UND,” Desrosiers said. “They worked with the tribes and did everything they could within their power to make this process easy and smooth for tribes.”

‘Private and sacred’

As opposed to its very public early stages, administrators have elected to avoid publicizing this latest step in the repatriation process.

An email went out to members of the university’s Indigenous community in July informing them of the forthcoming Federal Register notices.

“This is a very private and sacred time for our tribal nations and we want to respect that,” Armacost told the Herald earlier this month, adding the affected tribes had been “very patient” over the two years working with the university.

Keali’i Baker, a third-year law student who is president of the Native American Law Students Association, says he believes the end of the repatriation process will mean relief for Native students and the opportunity to heal.

“I think students will just be happy it’s over,” said Baker, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. “We’ll always be sad it happened in the first place and it wasn’t taken care of sooner.”

Still, he noted, he felt the university, and Armacost in particular, had handled the task of repatriation as best they could.

Sacred objects

The process of repatriating sacred objects and other objects of cultural patrimony will likely take longer than the return of ancestral remains.

According to a summary submitted by UND to the National Park Service under NAGPRA, UND has sent summaries of the sacred objects in its possession to 49 tribes that may have a claim to those items.

Two tribes and one lineal descendant have reached out to claim sacred objects so far. The Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe is claiming a pipe that belonged to a series of tribal chiefs named Standing Buffalo, per Desrosiers.

She said the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe seeks to display the pipe alongside other sacred objects, with the goal of establishing a museum documenting the tribe’s history.

“We want to be able to educate people about us, about who we are, what our history here has been and how long it has been, because we have been here for thousands of years,” she said.

‘At peace’

Desrosiers declined to share specific details on how the tribe will address the return of ancestral remains.

“It is a very private thing,” she said. “We are repatriating human remains. It would be akin to going to retrieve your ancestors out of a museum or research facility.”

Malaterre, who also served on the repatriation committee, said he anticipated his tribe would hold a traditional burial for the ancestral remains the tribe receives from UND.

He said the tribe had responded similarly to the repatriation of the remains of ancestors who died at federally-run boarding schools.

A proper burial in the Ojibwe tradition is important, Malaterre said, because it helps to shepherd the spirit into the afterlife.

“I’m just happy they’re in the right place and at peace,” he said. “That they’re not in a state of unrest, that their spirit has moved on.”

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